Abstract
Southern Ocean ecosystem management is characterized by a unique and complex international network of stakeholders and stakeholder relationships (a ‘transactional landscape’) relating to the globally significant services that these ecosystems support. This transactional landscape spans governments, industry (fishing and tourism), scientific research, conservation non-government organizations, civil society, and international decision-making forums. We used a network approach for stakeholder mapping to provide the first description of the transactional landscape for Southern Ocean ecosystem management – both in terms of the connections between stakeholders and ecosystem services, and directly between stakeholder groups. We considered 65 stakeholders and their relationships to 12 provisioning, regulating, supporting and cultural ecosystem services. An analysis of the connections within this network reveals differences in the degree of connectivity between stakeholders and ecosystem services. Notably, ecosystem science facilitates high connectivity between stakeholders and provisioning services, but there is little connectivity between stakeholders and supporting services. We then applied a formal ‘values-rules-knowledge’ framework to a set of case studies to analyze the decision-making process in relation to Southern Ocean ecosystem services, as well as the relative importance of different stakeholder groups which were considered in the network analysis. Our analyses suggest that emphases for decision making have been on knowledge and rules, but that wider consideration of values across the broader stakeholder landscape – together with science (knowledge) and governance (rules) – might better support decision making for Southern Ocean ecosystem conservation and management, and provide a stronger foundation for sustainable provision of ecosystem services into the future.
Highlights
Southern Ocean ecosystems support a range of ecosystem services that are significant at a global scale (Grant et al, 2013; Rogers et al, 2020; Trebilco et al, 2020)
Our analysis of the transactional landscape for Southern Ocean ecosystem stakeholders and ecosystem services indicates that, across the different stakeholder groups, the strongest interest is in provisioning ecosystem services, followed by regulating services (Figure 1; see Table 3 for a list of acronyms in this and subsequent figures)
A key precursor to understanding these aspirations is an understanding of who the stakeholders are for a particular context and how they are connected to ecosystems and ecosystem services
Summary
Southern Ocean ecosystems support a range of ecosystem services that are significant at a global scale (Grant et al, 2013; Rogers et al, 2020; Trebilco et al, 2020). For the Southern Ocean, these include, amongst others, fisheries products, genetic resources, biochemical and pharmaceuticals (all provisioning services); climate and air quality regulation (regulating services); photosynthesis, primary production and nutrient cycling (supporting services); tourism, recreation, and spiritual, religious and aesthetic value (cultural services) (Grant et al, 2013). These services are managed at an international level. Understanding the relationships between stakeholders and the services they wish to sustain is fundamental to meeting the challenge
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